A New Era In Oral Cardiovascular Risk Management Dawns: In the US, Merck's Lipfendra (PCSK9 Pill) Goes On Sale. Stock Jumps ~4%.

This entire blog -- now over 10,000 posts (and spanning all the days since early 2008) was originally my editorial narrative arc of a clearly suspect LDL pill called Vytorin. Back then, CEO Fast Fred Hassan was touting it, while the esteemed Yale MD, Dr. Harlan Krumholz (later) came to call this drug "a very expensive placebo" -- for cholesterol management.

The markets for managing high cholesterol, a primary risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, are vast -- into the high teens of billions of dollars a year, in the US alone. Finally, now -- with this morning's FDA approval -- a drug that actually works to improve outcomes (as a pill) is on market. And at ~$310 a month, most US patients are likely to receive the therapy. Sweet -- Merck's NYSE price is bound to rise today -- but here is the latest, via Reuters:

. . .The pill Lipfendra is intended to treat patients with hypercholesterolemia, which can be identified by elevated levels of LDL, the so-called "bad" cholesterol ⁠in the blood, often leading to plaque buildup in the arteries.

With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval, Lipfendra, also called enlicitide, would become the first oral PCSK9 inhibitor to enter the market, offering an alternative to a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs long dominated by injectables.

Its list price will be $10.50 per day, based on a 30-day supply, Merck told Reuters. The company's shares were up 1.1% in premarket trading. . . .

Now you know. Full circle -- and so, nearly 20 years later, the debacle that was the "very expensive placebo" called Vytorin -- at now gone-Schering-Plough, is at an end.

Smile -- rest of my crew arrives by jet this aft -- then into the cool but wild-fire hazed mountians again.

नमस्ते